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SOC 230 Sociological Aspects of Health and Illness

Online Reference Materials

To get started on your midterm group presentation, you'll want to start with reference materials. Some good places to begin:

NGOs Providing Health Data

The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) has country level profiles on health for member countries.

The World Health Organization has data on health and health systems. You can also access their resources by country

The CDC has factsheets for the countries they work in: CDC: Where We Work

Searching For Books In discoverE

From the Catalog tab in discoverE:

  • Type in your keywords
  • When you get some results, use "Refine Search Results" on the left to narrow your search by author, item type, date and more.

Too many search results?

  • Add additional terms to your search
  • Limit your search by item type, exact phrase, and/or author/title/subject using discoverE's drop-down menus
  • Use discoverE's "Refine Search Results" feature (in the left column) 

Too few results?

  • Remove some terms from your search
  • Add synonyms using OR [in upper case] with parentheses - for example (women OR woman OR female)

Off-topic results?

Search Strategies

  • Expand your search:
    • Include synonyms and plural/singular forms of keywords. Separate synonyms by OR. Separate the synonyms from the rest of the words by using parentheses.
    • Use truncation symbols (or wildcard symbols) to include variations of your search terms (e.g. scien$ will search for sciences, scientific, scientfically, etc.).
  • Narrow your search:
    • Combining different concepts/search terms with AND
    • Use the limit functions of the database. These are often located on the left side of the results page, or look in the database's Help menu to discover the limit functions it offers. Possibilities include limiting by date, language, type of article, etc.